It took me a week and a half, and about a dozen different outfits, before I finally gathered enough courage to show up at Pounds and Grounds. I wasn’t even sure when I’d made the decision to talk to Joshua again. All I knew was that every time I had spoken with my father in the last ten days, the wily man had managed to bring up Joshua. Dad was slick about it. It always seemed like a natural progression in the conversation. I tried to pretend it didn’t mean anything to me, but when Dad mentioned that Joshua usually worked the counter in his shop in the early mornings, I tucked that nugget of information away for future use.
It was the reason I was standing on the sidewalk outside the coffee shop at six-thirty in the morning. I was wearing a tight pair of black slacks that made my ass look
